Heat sinks are so-called extended surfaces that have been used to enhance cooling of heat dissipating surfaces. Such heat sinks have been fabricated in a number of designs. The designs are such as to decrease fluid flow impedance through the heat sink and thereby improve heat dissipation performance. The pin fin heat sink is of particular interest because it is one of the commonly used heat sinks.
The technological problem addressed by this patent-application is the lack of a heat exchanger that is easy to fabricate and manufacture, whilst maintaining a minimal number of components thus ensuring the low cost overall system implementation.
A significant number of relevant solutions are listed in the International Patent register. The following two describe the solutions that describe the state of the art in this area of technology.
According to US2008/0066888A1 (Danaher Motion Stockholm AB), the heat exchanger comprise the array of pin fins which are various in shape and position and thus some of those pin fins are arranged and acting as the coolant fluid deflector. Yet another solution as disclosed in U.S. Pat. No. 6,173,758 B1 (General Motors Corporation) incorporates plurality of extended straight pin fins various in shape and arranged in semicircular pattern, which are acting as coolant fluid deflector by forming the quasi channel for cooling fluid flow by drag force.
Pressure drop across a pin fin heat sink is one of the key variables that govern the thermal performance of the heat sink. Thus, the main and crucial disadvantage of stated solutions from prior art is that they are creating the flow deflection with unnecessary pressure drop and drag force, which contributes to higher pressure drop and pressure distribution distortion within the heat sink main cavity. Thus a problem of prior art pin fin heat sinks is to find the optimum configuration for controlled deflection of coolant fluid with minimum pressure drop.